


if i could make a deal with god

by soldier-dean (badaltin)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Depression, Drabble, Episode: s10e23 My Brother's Keeper, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 15:01:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4064335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badaltin/pseuds/soldier-dean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester has always known that he will never live long enough to grow old. </p>
<p>He's known it like it was written inside the marrow of his bones, scripted after his childhood went up in flames with his mother. He learned the hard way that the world was a dark, dark place, and that one day it would swallow him whole.</p>
<p>Thing is though, he's always seen himself dying in the midst of battle, fighting until his very last. When he got the Mark, it looked as if he'd be killed for everyone else's protection. But now, though...</p>
<p>Things were uncertain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if i could make a deal with god

Dean Winchester has always known that he will never live long enough to grow old. 

He's known it like it was written inside the marrow of his bones, scripted after his childhood went up in flames with his mother. He learned the hard way that the world was a dark, dark place, and that one day it would swallow him whole.

Thing is though, he's always seen himself dying in the midst of battle, fighting until his very last. When he got the Mark, it looked as if he'd be killed for everyone else's protection. But now, though...

Things were uncertain. 

The Mark of Cain was gone, vaporized from his arm by the lighting bolt of Zeus. But at what cost? What would the Darkness do to the world Dean has fought tirelessly to protect?

What would happen?

Lying on his bed, Dean curls in on himself like he's afraid of touching anything, afraid of filling the space around him. He buries his arm underneath the pillow so he doesn't have to look at it. So maybe he can wake up and pretend like the execution notice was still burned onto his skin - the clean expanse of flesh was an even worse reminder than the Mark had been.

Dean closes his eyes, and wonders how on Earth things have come to this.

He dreams of the man he once was, an entire lifetime ago. Of the man he could have become, if everything that had happened didn't. He dreams of things that are long gone and are best forgotten, because that is the man he is.

That is the man Dean Winchester has become, and it is who he will always be, no matter how much he longs to twist and turn the hands of time to his will.

If only he could make a deal with God, if only he could make a deal with his Past Self, if only he could make just One More Deal...

He's been walking hundreds of miles barefoot for these past few years, not bothering to pick out the shards of debris that claw their way under his skin. He is the eternal itinerant, wandering endlessly; he clears a path so that no one else has to. (Or should have to.) He hasn't slept in a lifetime.

Sam doesn't completely understand. Or maybe he doesn't want to understand everything.

The fact of the matter is, Dean's not meant for anything else - he's not good for anything else. He's an empty space, hollow air moving and settling with the dust on a window's ledge; he's dry fall leaves drifting through the dark, dank sewers, swept away out of sight; he's the shadow of the moon, constantly changing his face and shifting through the blackness of space like a solitary reaper.

Is that what Sam won't accept? Is that what he wants? What could he ever want that Dean has?

But, things have always been different for Sam, thank God. Always have, always will be. When John was alive, Dean would follow his orders to the dot. He learned to like his taste in music, his clothing, and anything his dad wanted him to. He never complained, not once. Never questioned him, never defied him, or acted unruly. Dean’s always known that he’s never been quite what John wanted, no matter how hard he tried. Sam might still think that he wasn’t Daddy’s Perfect Soldier™, but he never realized that wasn’t really what John expected of him. Sam might have thought that he had disappointed John, back in the day, but he didn’t. He doesn't have the same shadows beneath his eyes that Dean does, doesn't have that weight sitting in his heart like Dean does.

At least Sam acknowledges and accepts that it’s in Dean’s nature to push people away. Cas has never quite gotten there, had never grown up with Dean and realized that reluctant acceptance was A, B, C, and D on the multiple choice test. Too much heart was always Castiel’s problem, in the end.

The real problem, though, is that Cas doesn't see what Dean really is. He sticks around like the oil stains on Dean's tee shirts, despite everything. The real problem, though, is that Castiel sees him in the image Dean tried to convince onto himself:

A savior.

And, after all, Cas wasn’t terribly wrong for thinking that at first. Dean is the kind of man who tries to save everyone; because of this, many people are alive while Dean is not. If you write it out as an equation, put the numbers in the machine and calculate the answer, he might be considered a savior. 

But the instrument in Castiel’s head is broken – it only works on imaginary numbers, skips the necessary proofs, and remember Castiel: you cannot divide by zero.

No, Dean isn't a savior. He's all 'maybe if I kill enough monsters and save enough people, it will cancel out those I've condemned'. He doesn’t have room to be anything else but a weapon, but to try and be his dad’s blunt little instrument. He’s like a toy soldier: If you twist the key lodged in his spine and set him loose, he can move on his own, march on his own, almost like a real human can. Sometimes he almost buys into the facade, if it weren’t for the way he still creaks when he moves, arms and legs stiff from the effort of it all. But he’s still got a smile painted onto his wooden face, will still jitter to life if you wind him up enough. 

Maybe if he fights savagely, brutally, mercilessly, then no one else will have to. He will fight until he doesn’t remember what he’s fighting for – he will fight when there is nothing to fight for – he will fight because it is what he can do, and when failure’s all he’s ever known, victory is sweet.

He will fight for humanity. He will be their messiah, their paladin, their martyr. He will fight until his knuckles blister and the skin breaks, until the blood becomes permanently caked under his fingernails and to his skin, until he can barely stay conscious through the stench of death and the feel of bones snapping beneath him and the knowledge that he can barely tell the difference between his life and his time in hell anymore - even without the Mark edging him towards destruction.

In his world, the nightmares are what keep Dean grounded. They are the universe’s way of keeping him from tipping all the way over the edge of the knife he’s perched himself on. At least when he wakes up in a cold sweat with his screams stuck in his throat, he knows that he’s alive, he’s still human, and he is reminded once again that what’s dead should stay dead.

But when there’s a case on the horizon and a cooler of beer in the trunk, he seats himself behind the wheel and loses himself in the feel of the road beneath him. When there’s three bodies in the morgue and a werewolf or tulpa or poltergeist is responsible, he can turn himself into a knife and brandish himself against the evils of the world because that’s what he does and what he can do.

He will give up his future, his potential, his everything. He will do this, do all of this, because it’s all he can do.

It’s all he knows how to do

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr at http://migrantdean.tumblr.com/


End file.
